Ion implantation is a standard technique for introducing material into a workpiece. A desired implant material is ionized in an ion source, the ions are accelerated to form an ion beam of prescribed energy, and the ion beam is directed at the surface of the workpiece. The energetic ions in the beam penetrate into the bulk of the workpiece material and affect both the surface and depth of the workpiece material under certain conditions.
While ion implantation is typically used to alter the electrical properties of a workpiece, it can also be used to affect other material properties, such as resistance to specific chemicals, adhesion, hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, and others.
Inkjet printing is a technique that ejects liquid ink onto paper. The inkjet print head (or cartridge) has nozzles that are about the size of a needlepoint through which the ink is ejected. FIG. 1 is a view of an embodiment of an inkjet printer head 1. In some embodiments, such as that shown in FIG. 1, the head 1 may include multiple nozzles 2 to accommodate a plurality of colored inks 3. The printing process may involve a nucleation step using the ink, bubble growth, ejection of an ink drop, and refilling of the inkjet head.
Printing resolution and lifetime are both limited by the inkjet aperture size. Smaller apertures can provide higher resolution, but the lifetime is reduced due to clogging of the aperture with the ink. Applying inkjet printing to new fields such as, for example, biochips, metal wiring, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), or MEMS devices is being investigated. However, suitable printing heads are required for each application before widespread adoption can occur. For example, ejection of high viscosity ink droplets may need to provide high precision, high frequency, no chemical reaction, and no clogging. Thus, it may be beneficial to affect the properties of the material used to create the print head to minimize the interaction between the ink and the print head.
Another application where affecting material properties may be beneficial is MEMS and NEMS devices. MEMS devices relate to small mechanical devices driven by electricity. NEMS devices relate to devices integrating electrical and mechanical functionality on the nanoscale. Examples of these devices are accelerometers and gyroscopes, though there are countless others. MEMS and NEMS processing is extremely complex. One difficulty is that precise material modification to locally affect material properties has not been effectively demonstrated.
In addition, many materials would benefit from increased or modified chemical resistance. High energy ion implantation has been used in the past to affect chemical resistance of some materials. High energy implants may be time-consuming and may lead to increased manufacturing costs. These high energy implants also typically used exotic species such as Al, Mg, or Ti, which may be expensive. Furthermore, previous methods only treated a thick layer on the surface of the material and in some instances hardened the surface, which affected flexibility of the material.
Therefore, in each of these examples, it would be beneficial to have an improved method of precisely affecting material properties. Such an improved method could then be applied to various technologies, including inkjet printing, biochips and MEMS and NEMS devices, such as accelerometers, pressure sensors and gyroscopes.